Empathy is the
missing piece of
artificial intelligence
Nuance Labs is building the first human foundation model that understands and expresses emotion in real-time, across speech, facial expression, and body language.
SUPPORTED BY
SUPPORTED BY
SUPPORTED BY
FRONTIER
Bridging the emotional gap in artificial intelligence
Today’s virtual AI experiences fall short of genuine presence. Our vision is to create emotionally intelligent AI that feels as natural to engage with as a human.
Crossing the uncanny valley
Today’s AI feels emotionally flat and robotic. We are building technology that makes AI feel realistic.
Fostering two way interactions that feel truly alive
We believe the key to unlocking emotionally intelligent AI lies in interaction: the real-time, give-and-take that makes conversations feel alive.
Unifying voice, face and body
We are building a unified system that can appropriately express and empathetically interpret the subtle and meaningful landscape of human communication.
Imagine an AI that can understand a quirked eyebrow, a shift in tone, or a hesitant pause, and respond in a way that feels truly human.
Imagine an AI that can understand a quirked eyebrow, a shift in tone, or a hesitant pause, and respond in a way that feels truly human.
Our Team
Our Team
We’re research scientists who’ve spent years advancing AI avatar and audio-visual generation — publishing at top conferences and shipping ultra-low-latency ML products to millions. We combine frontier research with the ruthless engineering needed for consumer-grade, real-time systems.
We’re research scientists who’ve spent years advancing AI avatar and audio-visual generation — publishing at top conferences and shipping ultra-low-latency ML products to millions. We combine frontier research with the ruthless engineering needed for consumer-grade, real-time systems.
Fangchang Ma
CEO
PhD in Robotics/Machine Learning from MIT; previously an Engineering Manager at Apple. Published in NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, ICRA, and IROS, with 2400+ citations.
Fangchang Ma
CEO
PhD in Robotics/Machine Learning from MIT; previously an Engineering Manager at Apple. Published in NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, ICRA, and IROS, with 2400+ citations.
Edward Zhang
CTO
PhD in Computer Graphics from the University of Washington; previously a Senior Research Scientist at Apple and tech lead on neural rendering research. Published in CVPR and SIGGRAPH, with 400+ citations.
Edward Zhang
CTO
PhD in Computer Graphics from the University of Washington; previously a Senior Research Scientist at Apple and tech lead on neural rendering research. Published in CVPR and SIGGRAPH, with 400+ citations.
Karren Yang
Founding Research Scientist
PhD in Audio-visual synthesis from MIT; previously a Senior Research Scientist at Apple, with experience at Niantic Labs, Meta Reality Labs, Bosch Center for AI, and Adobe Research. Published in top AI conferences with 1800+ citations.
Karren Yang
Founding Research Scientist
PhD in Audio-visual synthesis from MIT; previously a Senior Research Scientist at Apple, with experience at Niantic Labs, Meta Reality Labs, Bosch Center for AI, and Adobe Research. Published in top AI conferences with 1800+ citations.
Claudia Vanea
Founding Research Scientist
PhD in AI for Health from Oxford. Published in Nature Communications and NeurIPS. Previously founder at South Park Commons.
Claudia Vanea
Founding Research Scientist
PhD in AI for Health from Oxford. Published in Nature Communications and NeurIPS. Previously founder at South Park Commons.
Nicole Zhen
Chief of Staff
Economics from Yale; previously management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and enterprise strategy and growth at Nordstrom.
Nicole Zhen
Chief of Staff
Economics from Yale; previously management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and enterprise strategy and growth at Nordstrom.
Rajath Kumar
Founding Research Scientist
Master's in Electrical Engineering from Columbia; previously a research scientist at Amazon AGI.
Rajath Kumar
Founding Research Scientist
Master's in Electrical Engineering from Columbia; previously a research scientist at Amazon AGI.
Elliott Bartsch
Founding Engineer
Statistics from Harvard; previously a Staff ML Engineer at Discord, with experience at Day Zero Diagnostics and Firecracker.
Elliott Bartsch
Founding Engineer
Statistics from Harvard; previously a Staff ML Engineer at Discord, with experience at Day Zero Diagnostics and Firecracker.
Yaser Sheikh
Advisor
Former VP of Codec Avatars at Meta and Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Yaser Sheikh
Advisor
Former VP of Codec Avatars at Meta and Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
We’re hiring!
We’re hiring!
We're a small, fast-moving research team based in Seattle. We have an exceedingly high bar — bringing on only the very best talent. Every member has massive ownership, deep trust, and the opportunity to shape both the technology and the company from ground up.
We're a small, fast-moving research team based in Seattle. We have an exceedingly high bar — bringing on only the very best talent. Every member has massive ownership, deep trust, and the opportunity to shape both the technology and the company from ground up.
